An unorganized machine is a concept mentioned in a 1948 report by
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer ...
titled "Intelligent Machinery", in which he suggested that the infant human
cortex
Cortex or cortical may refer to:
Biology
* Cortex (anatomy), the outermost layer of an organ
** Cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the vertebrate cerebrum, part of which is the ''forebrain''
*** Motor cortex, the regions of the cerebral cortex i ...
was what he called an "unorganised machine". It remained unpublished until 1969.
Overview
Turing defined the class of unorganized machines as largely random in their initial construction, but capable of being trained to perform particular tasks. Turing's unorganized machines were in fact very early examples of randomly connected, binary
neural network
A neural network is a group of interconnected units called neurons that send signals to one another. Neurons can be either biological cells or signal pathways. While individual neurons are simple, many of them together in a network can perfor ...
s, and Turing claimed that these were the simplest possible model of the
nervous system
In biology, the nervous system is the complex system, highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its behavior, actions and sense, sensory information by transmitting action potential, signals to and from different parts of its body. Th ...
.
Turing had been interested in the possibility of simulating neural systems for at least the previous two years. In correspondence with
William Ross Ashby in 1946 he writes:
In his 1948 paper Turing defined two examples of his unorganized machines. The first were ''A-type machines'' — these being essentially randomly connected networks of
NAND logic gates. The second were called ''B-type machines'', which could be created by taking an A-type machine and replacing every inter-node connection with a structure called a ''connection modifier'' — which itself is made from A-type nodes. The purpose of the connection modifiers were to allow the B-type machine to undergo "appropriate interference, mimicking education" in order to organize the behaviour of the network to perform useful work. Before the term ''
genetic algorithm
In computer science and operations research, a genetic algorithm (GA) is a metaheuristic inspired by the process of natural selection that belongs to the larger class of evolutionary algorithms (EA). Genetic algorithms are commonly used to g ...
'' was coined, Turing even proposed the use of what he called a ''genetical search'' to configure his unorganized machines.
Compucology.net Technology and biology "Unorganized machines and the brain"
/ref> Turing claimed that the behaviour of B-type machines could be very complex when the number of nodes in the network was large, and stated that the "picture of the cortex as an unorganized machine is very satisfactory from the point of view of evolution and genetics".
Notes
References
* Boccato, L., Soares, E. S., Fernandes, M. M. L. P., Soriano, D. C., & Attux, R. (2011). Unorganized Machines: From Turing’s Ideas to Modern Connectionist Approaches. ''International Journal of Natural Computing Research'', 2(4).
* Copeland, B. J., & Proudfoot, D. (1996). On Alan Turing's anticipation of connectionism. ''Synthese'', 108(3), 361–377. doi: 10.1007/BF00413694
* Copeland, B. J., & Proudfoot, D. (1999). Alan Turing's Forgotten Ideas in Computer Science. ''Scientific American''(280), 99–103.
* Teuscher, C. (2002). ''Turing’s Connectionism. An Investigation of Neural Network Architectures''. London: Springer-Verlag.
* Teuscher, C., & Sanchez, E. (2001). A Revival of Turing’s Forgotten Connectionist Ideas: Exploring Unorganized Machines. In R. M. French & J. P. Sougné (Eds.), ''Connectionist Models of Learning, Development and Evolution'' (pp. 153–162): Springer London.
* Webster, C. S. (2012). Alan Turing’s unorganized machines and artificial neural networks: his remarkable early work and future possibilities. ''Evolutionary Intelligence'', 5(1), 35-43. doi: 10.1007/s12065-011-0060-5
External links
{{Alan Turing, state=collapsed
Alan Turing